The Properties of Human Acts

Chapter V — The Properties and Consequences of Human Acts

THE PROPERTIES

AND THE CONSEQUENCES

OF HUMAN ACTS

A property or attribute of a thing is a quality, characteristic, or capacity, which belongs by natural necessity to the thing, yet forms no essential part, no constituent element, of the thing as such. Thus, the Church has the property or attribute of infallibility. The Church being what it is by nature—an institution divinely commissioned to teach all men of all times the truths that lead to salvation—must of necessity be infallible, must be free from the possibility of teaching men error in the truths that pertain to salvation. Else the Church would be an anomaly and a contradiction in itself; it would be face to face with the possibility of destroying itself and of falsifying its nature. Hence, while infallibility is not a constituent element of the Church, it is something necessarily consequent upon its nature; and thus we call infallibility a property or attribute of the Church.

This Chapter deals with the attributes or properties of human acts, that is, with the things that belong by natural necessity to human acts without forming an essential part or constituent element of the acts as such. We enumerate as such properties: imputability, merit, and demerit.

Further, the Chapter considers the human act in its consequences as touching the doer of the act, that is, in its effect upon the agent. For a human act once performed “lends a kind of easiness” to a repetition of itself. In other words, human acts tend to form habits of acting in the agent.

Since the human act, as an individual deed done, always has its morality as good or evil, the habit-forming tendency of human acts will be in the direction of good or evil. Good moral habits are called virtues, evil moral habits are called vices.

The Chapter deals with imputability, merit, demerit, virtues, and vices, in two Articles, as follows:

Article 1. The Properties of Human Acts
Article 2. The Consequences of Human Acts

Article 1. The Properties of Human Acts

a) The Imputability of Human Acts

A human act is, by definition, both knowing and free. It proceeds entirely from a knowing and free agent, from a rational being. Thus it belongs to the agent; it is his act. This is what is meant by saying that a human act is imputable to its agent, or that a human act has the property of imputability.

Now, as we have seen, every human act has its morality; every human act, either objectively or in its end or circumstances, is, as an individual deed done, a good or an evil act. Hence it follows that, when an act is imputed to the agent, it is imputed to him as good or evil. Thus imputability involves the notion of praiseworthiness or culpability.

Human acts are imputable, and hence the agent is responsible, accountable, answerable for them. He is answerable for them as good or evil, that is, he is answerable for them on the score of their morality, and, logically, his answer must be made to Him who imposes the Norm of Morality. Imputability, therefore, means the accountability that man must bear for his human acts before Almighty God.

God has established an Eternal Law for his creatures, an eternal ordinance of the Divine Reason to direct and guide all things to their proper last end, which is Himself, His own external glory. All bodily creatures except man are necessitated by this law; but within the field of application of the Eternal Law there is a special place for God’s free creatures; and here man, while obligated by the Law, is not forced or necessitated. Now man has reason, and very early in life he acquires an equipment of reasoned moral principles which are really recognitions of the Eternal Law, and these his conscience applies in individual acts, so that he knows his obligation in evident moral matters eyen when he disregards it. By these acts, then, man must stand; he cannot disclaim them; they are his. And so we say that for every human act man stands liable to answer at the bar of Reason—of human reason (conscience) here, and of Divine Reason (God) hereafter. This, in fine, is the doctrine of the imputability of human acts.

The extent of imputability has, of necessity, been treated as a matter pertinent to the very nature of human acts. The student is referred in particular to Chapter I, Article 2, b.

b) The Merit and Demerit of Human Acts

The dictionary defines merit as the quality, state, or fact of deserving well or ill. We may divide this definition, and describe merit as the quality, state, or fact of deserving well; and we may describe demerit as the quality, state, or fact of deserving ill.

Nor is merit (or demerit) only a “quality, state, or fact” of human acts. It is a property of such acts, since it belongs to them by natural necessity. For human acts being what they are—free, knowing, imputable—it follows that good human acts “deserve well,” while evil human acts “deserve ill” at the hands of the Ruler of human acts. The Ruler of human acts is God. In the field of free choice God rules men by suasion, not by force; and His rule is the Norm of Morality, that is Divine Reason (the Eternal Law) and human reason (conscience). Thus, as the obedient subject of a true law deserves well of the lawgiver, and as the disobedient subject deserves punishment, so the agent of good human acts deserves well of God, the Divine Lawgiver, while the agent of evil human acts deserves punishment. Thus we see that merit and demerit are really extensions of the property of imputability in human acts: for such acts are imputed to their agent as worthy of praise or blame, of reward or punishment. Still, while a man “deserves well” for his good acts, he has in that fact no strict title to reward; nor does the subject of human law look for a premium from the State for being a good citizen. Something more is required to establish a claim to reward. The human act which is good, and which confers a benefit upon him from whom reward is looked for, a benefit not already due, and a benefit for the conferring of which it is somehow understood that reward will be forthcoming— such is the human act which establishes a claim to reward.

Now, God has established his Eternal Law. He has mad_e sanctions_ for it, i. e., inducements to lead reasonable men to obey its prescriptions, and punishments to deter men from violating them. By this very fact He has given promise of reward and threat of punishment. Man cannot, indeed, confer a benefit, strictly so-called, upon God, for man cannot give to God anything that is not already His; the most loving and devoted service man can render throughout his life is already owed to God. Still, by our good acts we can honor God, although it were possible, by abuse of free will, to dishonor Him; and thus, in some sense, we can do what is “beneficial” to God, and hence we can establish a sort of “claim” to reward. Certainly, in our bad acts, by denying God what is due Him, we render ourselves liable in strict justice to punishment at His hands. But the real foundation of human merit before God is the perfection of God Himself. God is necessarily true to His promises; and He who has implanted in the heart of man a quenchless thirst for happiness, will not allow that thirst to exist in vain; that thirst will be satisfied unless man, by evil human acts, rejects God who alone can satisfy it.

Summary of the Article

In this brief Article we have dealt with matters already spoken of passingly throughout the whole of General Ethics. We have singled these out for a short special consideration merely for the sake of completeness in our work.

Here we have learned what is meant by the imputability, merit, and demerit of human acts, and we have seen how these belong to human acts by natural necessity and are therefore properties of human acts.

The practical value of our study of this matter lies in the fact that it affords us a clear scientific knowledge of our responsibility for what we deliberately think, do, and say. No longer dare we outrage reason by attempting to shift the responsibility for our acts to others. No longer dare we say, “The others made me do it;” “I couldn’t help it;” “You know, it really wasn’t my fault that I did this.” Now we know, know definitely and scientifically, that we must stand by our human acts! They are our acts, not to be disclaimed!